Material Handling Equipment Planning

Question: Discuss about the Material Handling Equipment Planning. Answer: Preface: JustMoveIt logistics is a logistic service provider and has been awarded with a long-term contract to provide the warehousing services fo sedapMakan Pte Ltd, A food manufacturing company, which produces convenience foods such as ready to eat meals and packaged frozen foods. The current objective is to come up with a concept plan for the warehouse layout to suit SedapMakans requirements. The details of the products to be handled and currently being produced in its food processing lines are provided below for reference, Ready to eat meals are being provided in re-heatable plastic packaging systems Frozen foods in packaged format To be handled based on First expired first out basis Approximately about 500 SKUs need to be stored in the ware house. Orders and handling bulk data: Average of 60 orders per month Each order will range from 5 to 40 lines MOQ for each order will be about 1000 cartons [Hence the order volume can be about 5000 cartons to 40,000 cartons] Urgent orders requires picking up 50SKUs from the line Inbound logistics: 10 to 50 twenty foot containers depending on the sales for that month. Storage 2 months of stock to be kept 35% of the stock to be stored in chiller 65% of the stock to be stored in A/C environment Outbound: There will be sales to 8 countries in Asia Pacific Sales to 6 countries in Middle East Each outbound order ranges from 15 to 80 ISO pallets. Additional information: Each 20 foot container can hold upto 20 ISO pallets On average 1 ISO pallet holds 200 cartons. Inferences and calculations: Each container can contain about 4000 cartons. Total outbound can range upto 16000 cartons ( 80 ISO pallets) Total Inbound can range upto 50 containers ( 50 * 20 ISO pallets) Total cartons can be upto 2,00,000 cartons maximum ( 50 * 20 ISO pallets) Minimum inbound cartons can be 40,000 cartons ( 10 * 20 ISO pallets) Observations: From the given conditions it is much clear that there will be more to do with the handling of the ISO pallets containing the cartons of the food material. Hence inorder to handle the same following are the equipment to be employed. Proposed Material Handling Equipment: The type of equipment needed to handle the pallets can be any of the following, Pallet trucks, Pallet jacks, (Powered and Manual handling types) Bulk load container (For movement within the ware house) Forklifts (For moving the pallets within the ware house as well to support the loading and unloading operations) Electric hoist (For lifting the bulk loads and for movement in the ware house) Jib crane (For material movement) Bridge Crane (Based on necessity will be according to the layout of the warehouse) Gantry Crane(Mobile Gantry crane Recommended) Narrow Aisle straddle Truck Side loader Tractor Trailer Specifications (Suggestive) of the material handling equipment proposed: Pallet Jack Toyota 8HBE40 Pallet Truck Hand Type (3 Ton) Model BT lifter Clark NSR 25 Narrow Aisle Reach Truck LD single girder Electric hoist crane Span Length 7.5m-31.5m, Lifting capacity 1-32Tons Tractor Trailer specifications 86 Height, 86 width, 48 length of the trailer Gantry crane capacity 3 Tons to 5 Tons Bridge Crane capacity 3 Tons to 5 tons Forklift standard sizes BoBcat S130 model. Remarks: The exact size of the equipment and the capacity, need to be designed based on the actual dimensions of the ware house layout as well as other dimensions involved in. References: Parrish, A. (Ed.). (2014).Mechanical engineer's reference book. Elsevier. Accorsi, R., Manzini, R., Maranesi, F. (2014). A decision-support system for the design and management of warehousing systems.Computers in Industry,65(1), 175-186